IUCN Water

By James Dalton of IUCN’s Water Programme. Flooding is the most common hydrological hazard – with global economic losses from floods averaging US$3 billion a year, predicted to become US$1 trillion a year by 2050. Over the last 100 years they have also been the most fatal disasters, ruining families, communities, and at times, setting […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post Floods, finance, fears and fallacies appeared first on IUCN International .

By James Dalton of IUCN’s Global Water Programme. Version française A year ago I wrote a blog post on a workshop that we jointly held with the Ramsar Secretariat in partnership with Danone Waters – the bottled water arm of the French multinational. It caught people’s attention, partly because of what we were doing, and […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post Shaking the bottle: reforming policy and improving water management appeared first on IUCN International .

By Jane Lawton, Head of Communications, IUCN Asia. The word ‘dialogue’ may be somewhat overused in our development lexicon, but the recent meeting of the Mekong Water Dialogues I attended in Siem Reap, Cambodia provided a powerful example of what we really mean by effective dialogue in action. The meeting brought together national teams from […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post Talk of rivers and flooded forests appeared first on IUCN International .

By Juan Carlos Sanchez of IUCN’s Environmental Law Centre. One of the key messages coming from this year’s World Water Week in Stockholm is that climate change presents an opportunity for transboundary cooperation. After a series of seminars on this topic, there seem to be several arguments that support this. It is clear that a […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post Flexibility and adaptability: ingredients for transboundary success appeared first on IUCN International .

By Claire Warmenbol of IUCN’s Water Programme. As part of the ‘Nexus Dialogue on Water Infrastructure Solutions’, I recently attended a workshop in Bogotà, Colombia – the second in a series of three regional workshops, jointly organised by IUCN and the International Water Association. Before I share some thoughts on this event, I should quickly […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post All hands to the pump – lessons and solutions on water management from Bogotà appeared first on IUCN International .

By Milika Sobey of IUCN’s Oceania Office. Last week, I visited Manaoba Island, located in Malaita Province. This was my first visit to rural Solomon Islands since 1988 when I went on a two-week trip to the Western Province to do research in Marovo Lagoon. Little has changed in terms of living standards and access […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post A first-hand view of the gap between global goals and reality on the ground appeared first on IUCN International .

It is much more complicated to manage water than carbon and deserves more effort than simply transferring the same metrics, says James Dalton of IUCN’s Water Programme writing for Guardian Professional. New business terms and trends come and go. Net positive impact (NPI) is one of these engaging concepts. It’s a relatively simple idea – business impacts on […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post Is net positive feasible when it comes to water? appeared first on IUCN International .

By James Dalton of IUCN’s Water Programme, attending World Water Week. This year’s annual World Water Week was a challenge of schedules. With more to say and with us involved in many sessions we tag-teamed presentations, speaking slots, panels and facilitation. The week focussed on Water Cooperation – Building Partnerships, and our BRIDGE project was […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post Environmental flows and the sausage machine appeared first on IUCN International .

By Rebecca Welling of IUCN’s Water Programme attending World Water Week in Stockholm. When you think about water diplomacy, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Law? Transboundary conflict? States and Ministers agreeing on pertinent issues? For me, from a water management perspective, it was about legal frameworks, international law and States coming together to […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post Sharing learning on water diplomacy at World Water Week appeared first on IUCN International .

By Dr James Dalton, Coordinator, Global Initiatives, IUCN Water Programme. Well, it’s an easy question to answer – we need both. But what sort of blend do we need? Over the last few weeks I have been surprised and, I’ll admit, a little exasperated over some things – maybe it’s the heat and the noise in […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post Do we need more data, or just more of turning knowledge into action? appeared first on IUCN International .

By Brian Jones, Conservation Coordinator, Blue Ventures Conservation, an IUCN Member It’s no secret that fisheries around the globe are in trouble, with the Food and Agriculture Organization recently reporting that over half of the world’s fisheries are “fully exploited” and another third are either “over-exploited”, “depleted” or “recovering from depletion”. The challenge of managing […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post Kayaks to Korea – locally-managed marine areas at the 2012 IUCN World Conservation Congress appeared first on IUCN International .

By Dr James Dalton, Coordinator, Global Initiatives, IUCN Water Programme. ‘Nam bilong me James Dalton’ – I said as we all did introductions in Pidgin at the beginning of the stakeholder consultation meeting in Gizo, the capital of the Western Province of the Solomon Islands.  We continued introductions around the table and I handed over […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post Climate change adaptation in practice appeared first on IUCN International .

By Dr James Dalton, Coordinator, Global Initiatives, IUCN Water Programme. I just came back from the International Hydropower Association (IHA) Congress in Kuching – the capital of the Malaysian State of Sarawak on Borneo. We wanted to see what progress had been made in the application of the Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol (HSAP) following its […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post Hydropower back on the agenda appeared first on IUCN International .

By Claire Warmenbol of IUCN’s Global Water Programme. I will start this post with a confession. When I recently told my mother I was flying to Nairobi for a workshop on the Nexus Dialogue, I struggled to explain to her, in a jargon-free way, what this project is all about. The truth was, the Nexus, […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry... The post The realities of the Nexus appeared first on IUCN International .

By Dr James Dalton, Coordinator, Global Initiatives, IUCN Water Programme. Corporate partnerships are big news nowadays – especially on water. The resource that many of them need or impact upon is fast becoming a focal point for discussions around sustainability. Water footprinting, stewardship, and the ‘nexus’ issues – the complex way water flows through the […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

By Mark Smith, Director of IUCN's Global Water Programme "World Water Day is like any themed global day: it’s not really to ‘celebrate’ water, it’s about getting people to pay attention and decide they’re going to take action to solve water problems."  With this is mind, the day started well. BBC news had a series of reports […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

By James Dalton, Coordinator, Global Initiatives, IUCN's Global Water Programme. It has been over three years since we first sat down with CEMEX, the global building materials company headquartered in Monterrey, Mexico. It was one of those meetings where we were not sure what they wanted to talk about apart from the general subject of […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

By Rebecca Welling, Project Officer with IUCN’s Global Water Programme.   Recognition and understanding of the closely-bound interaction between water, energy and food production and use – the 'nexus' – is established in these sectors, but perhaps for many, ‘this nexus’ is still not entirely understood. So the IUCN Global Water Programme decided to better […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

By James Dalton of IUCN’s Global Water Programme. I am an engineer. I like to see how and why things work the way they do, and like to focus on how to make things work better, including projects and programmes. I was also taught and trained in science – but I struggle with it. I […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

By Claire Warmenbol, IUCN Global Water Programme Communications Officer.    What is hydro-diplomacy? I was able to find the answer to that question last week when I interviewed leading water experts, scientists and politicians at the IUCN Hydro-diplomacy conference in Chiangrai, Thailand. I asked the question many times and received as many different answers. Clearly, […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...